Terminator era: from PETMAN to ATLAS

Space.com reports that in December 20-21 2013 The DARPA Robotics Challenge will take place at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida. There, several teams will have to guide their robots through difficult obstacles where the robots will have to climb stairs, to walk around obstacles and to even work with a fire hose.

If that not enough from a robot (autonomous one, i would guess), then i don’t know what to say. PETMAN, created by Boston Dynamics with funds from DARPA, proved to be a very robust robot with an almost smooth walking stance. ATLAS is an improvement over PETMAN because it can walk over obstacles it can handle unforseen situations on the ground and can also stabilise itself if hit from the sides.

The Terminator era is here and it seems hat not the hardware is the issue at hand. The culprit was always the software, the programs that make the robot react and follow instructions. For now, autonomous robots will be good in battle field too, but it seems that they will be remote controlled to a certain extent.